Amid complaints by team employees and sponsors over unkept promises and late paychecks, the Prairie Dogs' owners insist they've been handling their business aboveboard.

Any rumblings of financial turmoil, they said, are unfounded. And rumors suggesting they've intentionally stiffed anyone are untrue.

"I'm not at the local level on this, but it would be easy to find out," said John Bryant, who along with partner Byron Pierce owns the majority stake in the P-Dogs, as well as several other teams in the North American Baseball League's United Division. "We don't leave anybody unpaid ever."

Bryant's definitive denial runs counter to claims of many who spent this past summer with the club — including gameday employees, front office members and players.

If there are employees still waiting to be paid, Bryant, a Dallas attorney and former U.S. representative, said he's unaware of it. And if made aware, he said he'd be happy to rectify the situation.

"We have a lot of part-time people that work at the team level, and there's always the possibility that somebody doesn't get a paycheck," he said. "But not if they tell us about it. I'd just need to know who it is, and we'll get them paid. It's not a problem."

It's certainly not a problem of capacity, Bryant said. Contrary to rumors, the league he and Pierce operate together is in good financial health.

On Oct. 2, Bryant and Pierce bought Fort Worth's LaGrave Field and the land around it for the purchase price of $4.5 million. And they have plans to expand the NABL's United Division beyond its six existing markets in 2013.

"As a newspaper reported, we paid $4.5 million to buy the land and the stadium in Fort Worth," Bryant said. "Our actual expenditure was quite a bit more than that because there's a lot more to an acquisition than just the price you pay.

"We bought the Fort Worth Cats baseball team in January prior to buying the facility. So we have a strong balance sheet, and we have a real good plan for going forward and being able to bring really the highest level of professional baseball short of the majors to all of our cities."

That list of cities still includes Abilene, Bryant said.

With the way the Prairie Dogs' first season back in Abilene ended — eight games short of its scheduled finale — and the silence that followed that decision, there was some question whether or not Abilene remained in the league's long-term plans. But Bryant assured it does.

"We expect to be playing in Abilene one way or the other," he said. "When Byron Pierce brought the team to Abilene in 1995, they played for five years. He and I were both determined to be there again. My family's from Stamford, my entire family is from West Texas, and we want to be in business there for reasons that are not only economic. We love the area."

There was very little economic benefit to the Prairie Dogs' existence last season. In fact, the team operated at a deficit Bryant estimated to be $150,000.

Playing at McMurry's Driggers Field, where alcohol sales are prohibited and the team's concession and souvenirs sales were outsourced to local companies, the P-Dogs' gameday atmosphere lacked many aspects independent league baseball needs to be successful.

But Bryant still considered the experiment to place a team in Abilene a good one.

"It's obviously a drain on resources, but we viewed it as an investment, introducing professional baseball back to Abilene even though it was not at a commercial venue," he said.

Getting the team into a commercial venue is the next order of business.

"McMurry was great. We loved being there, but you've got to be in a 4,200-seat stadium with full ability to vend your concessions to market your souvenirs and to produce great food and entertainment," Bryant said.

To date, no concrete progress has been made to that end. But Bryant said he and Pierce have been in contact with the city about a "public-private partnership" to get a facility built.

And since the league builds its own stadiums — as with San Angelo's Foster Field — and sets its own schedules, there's no drop-dead date by which that needs to be done.

"We've spent a great deal of time on it, and the city has been very cooperative working with us in regards to what's possible and what's not possible," Bryant said. "We're working as hard as we can."